Poems

September 10, 2010 Susan O’Dell Underwood is the director of creative writing at Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tennessee, where she has taught Appalachian literature, modern poetry, and writing for than twenty years. She earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the PhD in English from Florida State University. In 2004, her novel-in-progress, Genesis Road, won the Tennessee Arts Commission grant for writing. Her first chapbook, From, about family and cultural influence in the mountain South, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Underwood is originally from Bristol, Tennessee.

September 3, 2010 Clay Matthews has published work in The American Poetry Review, Spinning Jenny, Willow Springs, The JournalMuffler (H_NGM_N B_ _KS) and Western Reruns (available for free download online from End & Shelf Books). His first full-length collection, Superfecta, was released by Ghost Road Press in 2008, and a second, Runoff, was recently released from BlazeVOX Books. He teaches at Tusculum College in Greeneville, Tennessee, and edits poetry for The Tusculum Review.

July 14, 2010 Kate Daniels is the author of three volumes of poetry, including The Niobe Poems and Four Testimonies: Poems. Her first volume, The White Wave was awarded the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize for Poetry. Her MFA is from Columbia University. Her poems have been anthologized in a number of publications and have appeared in journals such as American Poetry Review, Critical Quarterly, and The Southern Review. She has also edited a volume of poems by Muriel Rukeyser and co-edited a book about Robert Bly: Of Solitude and Silence. Her fourth collection of poetry, A Walk in Victoria’s Secret, will appear in October from LSU Press.

July 2, 2010 Jeff Hardin, a native of Savannah, Tennessee, lives in Columbia and is a professor of English at Columbia State Community College. A graduate of Austin Peay State University and the University of Alabama, where he received an MFA degree in creative writing, Hardin is the author of two chapbooks, Deep in the Shallows (GreenTower Press) and The Slow Hill Out (Pudding House), as well as one book-length collection, Fall Sanctuary, recipient of the Nicholas Roerich Prize. His poems have appeared in many journals, including The Hudson Review, The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, Southwest Review, Poetry Northwest, Poet Lore, Meridian, Southern Poetry Review, and Zone 3. “Always Upstream or Downstream” first appeared in The Florida Review.

May 21, 2010 Ashley McWaters grew up in Memphis. Her work has appeared in DIAGRAM, Painted Bride Quarterly, Hunger Mountain, and Northwest Review, among others. Her debut book of poetry, Whitework, twice a finalist for the National Poetry Series, explores sewing as synecdoche for the whole of women’s work. McWaters teaches at the University of Alabama, where she directs the undergraduate creative writing program. She will read from Whitework at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on May 22 at 1 p.m.

May 14, 2010 Stephanie Pruitt is a poet and teaching artist with community-based organizations including Youth Speaks Nashville and the Magdalene House. A Cave Canem Fellow and member of the Affrilachian Poets, Pruitt received the 2010 Academy of American Poets Prize, the 2009 Sedberry Prize, was a finalist for Poets and Writers’ Magazine‘s Maureen Egen Award, and was named one of “Forty Favorite Poets” by Essence magazine in honor of its fortieth anniversary. This week she will receive her Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Vanderbilt University. Pruitt lives with her family in Nashville.